Your Cricut Explore Children’s Elephant Pocket T-shirt

Creating your own bespoke T-shirts by adding felt embellishments is a doddle when using the Cricut Explore Air™ / Air 2™ / Maker™ and the online software, Design Space™. This project customises one of the Cricut images to create a simple and oh-so-cute children’s elephant pocket t-shirt, however there’s no reason this design couldn’t be replicated on an adults top..

The felt is stabilised with Heat N Bond before cutting, so that there’s no sewing required to secure it to the T-shirt, what could be simpler!

NOTE: The term ‘Cricut Explore’ refers to all the Explore machines: Explore™, Explore Air™, Explore Air 2™ and Explore One™.

1. Using a laptop/Mac/iPad/iPhone/Android device, log on to your Design Space™ account and make sure you are connected to your Cricut Explore™ / Maker™ machine. Open a new project. In ‘images’, search for and select the elephant image #M507A534.

2. Delete the black and white layers.

3. Resize the image as desired to fit the pocket of the T Shirt.

4. Insert a circle from ‘shapes’ and resize it to match the pink circles of the elephant’s cheeks. Duplicate the image.

5. Use colour sync to change the circles the pink colour.

6. Delete the pink elephant layer.

7. Un-group the image. Use ‘hide contour’ to remove the eyes and cheek holes from the light and dark grey layers. Re-group the layers once this step is complete in case you need to resize the project.

8. Apply Heat n Bond Ultra to the back of the felt using an iron.

9. Cut the elephant layers from the bonded felt using the fine point blade; selecting the ‘acrylic felt, bonded’ material setting. Place the felt bonded side down on to the cutting mat using the brayer to ensure good contact.

10. Use the remover tool to carefully lift each cut piece from the cutting mat.

11. Sew French knots using black embroidery thread to create the elephant’s eyes on the top layer.

12. Use the Easy Press™ or an iron and press cloth to heat seal the layers on to the T shirt.

Top Tip: Let the trunk of the top layer overhang the pocket. If you want this to be loose (not sealed), do not heat it with the iron.